Research on the composition of stars has revealed that we really are made of stardust.

The results came from a catalog of more than 150,000 stars, which includes all the key elements of life known as CHNOPS - carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous and sulfur.

The researchers for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) used a telescope based at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico to collect light near the stars to reveal the chemicals in their atmosphere.

The colors in the spectra show dips, the size of which reveal the amount of these elements in the atmosphere of a star. The human body on the left uses the same color coding to show the important role these elements play - from the oxygen in our lungs to the phosporus in our bones. The cyan dots show the measurements of the oxygen abundance in different stars - brighter dots indicate higher oxygen abundance

HOW THEY DID THE STUDY

Astronomers couldn't visit the stars to take a sample of what they're made of, so they used a technique called spectroscopy.

The technique splits light from distant stars into detailed rainbows called spectra.

The researchers worked out how much of each element a star contains by measuring the light patterns in the spectra caused by different elements.

The chemistry measurements use a device called a spectrograph which senses infrared light as part of the APOGEE (Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment) project

The colors in the spectra show dips, the size of which reveal the amount of these elements in the atmosphere of a star.

The elements play an important role in different parts of our body - from the oxygen in our lungs to the phosphorus in our bones.

Sten Hasselquist, a researcher at New Mexico State University, said: 'For the first time, we can now study the distribution of elements across our galaxy.

'The elements we measure include atoms that make up 97 per cent of the mass of the human body.'

These elements play an important role in different parts of our body - from the oxygen in our lungs to the phosphorus in our bones.

The catalog lists the amount of almost two dozen chemical elements for each star.

This is the first time that measurements of all the CHNOPS elements have been made for such a large number of stars.

A fraction of the almost 200,000 stars surveyed overlapped with the sample of stars analyzed by the NASA Kepler mission, which was designed to find potentially Earth-like planets.

Astronomers couldn't visit the stars to take a sample of what they're made of, so they used a technique called spectroscopy.

The technique splits light from distant stars into detailed rainbows called spectra.

The researchers worked out how much of each element a star contains by measuring the light patterns in the spectra caused by different elements.